Teaching Preparitory Footwork

[RITFencing]

So, I just had a very interesting conversation with a friend of mine who is also a coach about teaching footwork and preparation, or more specifically teaching preparitory footwork (as the title implies.)

I'm not talking about the final few tempos of an action, here. I already know how to have a student lead off with a slow half advance and finish the action with the rest of an advance and lunge, change it into a check step backwards or just finish the advance and start over depending on what happens to the distance, or any other preparitory footwork exercise you would care to mention.

As my friend put it, these types of exercises are talking about the time where a fence collapses the distance from "safe" to "hit." However, a large part of bouts, especially in epee and foil, is spent dealing with distance while in the "safe" range. Manuevering up and down the strip, feeding false information, learning the opponent, etc. These are still preparitory actions, yet I find that they are not dealt with very much during lessons, which instead tend to focus on the last few tempos of an action; again where it goes from safe to hit, perhaps witha few seconds of footwork there.

This is something I've been thinking about for a while. I've had the opportunity to get lessons, give them and watch them being given to and from many different people of many different skill levels, but it seems to me (bear in mind that this is mostly from an epee perspective) that these lessons are much more focussed on the final few actions in any given touch than most bouts tend to be. If you don't believe me, the next time you get a lesson, keep track of how many attempts to hit are made in a given period of time, and then do the same thing in a bout.

So why is this? Is it better to learn that manuevering otuside of fencing distance on one's own in bout situations? Is the amount of time that this learning could be accelerated by including more of such things in lessons negligible? Have people just not thought much about it? Is time better spent, especially given the length of the average lesson, on other things? Any other thoughts on this subject?

To speak from personal experience, I have not had much time devoted to this in my fencing education, and subsequently I don't know how to really pass on what little about it I have learned through my own organic trial and error.

[RITFencing]

Assuming that a fencer has good footwork - maneuvering outside of distance is simply about keeping distance.

Are you really sure of that?

Secondly, since distance really isn't a static thing and is, IMHO, perhaps the most important thing in fencing, is it really so simple?

[Fechter1]

True, blade lessons tend to focus only on the final blade and foot actions, as they mostly focus on the technical aspects of making that final action, and not how to set up this action on a more macro scale. That is probably best done during the footwork section of practice.

Again, I can only speak from personal experience (both as a student, fencer, and coach):

Teach (/learn) footwork (form) during basic FW practice. Advance that into pattern practice (specific FW patterns focussing on tempo and direction changes). Advance again into distance games ('follow the leader' type FW, teach the student to maintain dynamic distance). Finally, you have the FW games, where the objective is to 'trap' the opponent into specific distances.
This should teach the basics of form, direction change, tempo change (varying the length and speed of you steps).

Once you/ve given them the basics, they'll have to learn to apply the lessons, just like they do with bladework, in bouting sessions (controlled or not).

[RITFencing]

Fechter1, great advice as always; just one question for you. Do/should the skills learned in these footwork games get further polish and intergration in lessons? The reason I ask (and in fact the reason for this whole thread) is that I've been thinking about how to make my lessons more bout-like, and this is one of the major discrepancies I've seen between lessons (ones I give, ones I get, ones I watch) and bouting. I realzie very well that some lessons will be focussed on the final bits of prep and final actions, but over the course of a fencer's education, it seems to me that in indivual lessons, these things are lacking.

Do you think that such things are better covered in a group setting, with a progression like the one you gave, and do you think such things are better used with students of a certain skill level? In my experince, at least, most (but by no means all) of the more skilled fencers I know don't participate in many group classes, instead focussing on private lessons and bouting.

[oiuyt]

The second (and more important in a bout) is recognising the collapse of distance at its earliest instant. If you see the collapse of distance before the opponent then you should hit them - this has nothing to do with which of you was responsible for the collapse of distance.

If you cause the collapse you are likely to recognize it at the earliest instant, no? And if you don't, you may or may not. Sounds like a good argument for RIT's side. Can one be good enough to survive giving up this advantage to one's opponent? Absolutely. Does that mean that it's not still an advantage? Hardly.

Going back to RIT's questions. At Temple we do paired exercises that work on this. A lot of my lessons put actions into very bout-like settings. While it's rarely explicitly discussed, it's certainly included in at least some of those lessons. Now that you've raised my awareness of it, I might start explicitly working on the topic.

Sweet. Complete thread drift here. In the background I have the basketball game on TV (FAMU-Niagra, play-in game to the bracket of 64). Just caught an ad with a bunch of fencing in it. One of those NCAA spots ("There are over 360,000 NCAA student-athletes and just about all of us will be going pro in something other than sports" campaign). Looks like it takes place in a courtroom. Foil, with cuts to shots of someone, presumably the proud mother of a fencer/future lawyer or judge.

Hope I'll see it again, so I can actually pay attention to it.

-B

[RITFencing]

Thanks, Brad.

Do you have any good examples of drills you use for this, or of how you work it into individual lessons?

[RITFencing]

Well here is a rhetorical question; how many fencers does it take to collapse distance?

When maneuvering in a bout distance is constantly on the verge of collapse - deliberately or accidentally and may be caused passively or actively. So IMHO what matters is balance and controlled footwork and the ability to see distance and the change of distance. Those are things which should be components of a normal lesson (and I'm guessing things RIT has covered).

.... add in footwork training and you should have it all covered.

As an aside I've always had more of an issue in getting across the importance of using footwork passively to control distance; there is often a tendency to see active/aggressive footwork as the way to drive the collapse of distance. May just be me of course.

I can actually buy in to a lot of what you're saying here. Footwork is about controlling distance, and all that manuevering we see is generally on the edge of having that distance collapse. However, as Brad pointed out, there are situations where it is more advantageous to one fencer to collapse that distance (when the opponent is off balance, not concentrating, does not expect it, etc) and a fencer who can control when the actual fencing begins seems, to me, to have an advantage over the one who is just keeping distance and waiting for this to happen. Like I tell my students, pick your battles. Don't let any fencing happen until YOU want it to. I'm just looking for more on how to teach them to accomplish this.

When to collapse to fencing distance isn't the only thing going on here; there more to all of the out of distance play, and I think that it really is a very important part of the game, and one that is neglected by many coaches, including myself. Not compeltely neglected, perhaps, but not given the attention it should recieve.

[RITFencing]

I don't really think we disagree or rather the disagreement relates to the point of emphasis rather than the desired outcome in the student.

Sounds fair.

[UOTE]So aspects of distance play. My personal doubt relates in part to how distance play is introduced. If you consider normal distance games (say the glove game) the 'winner' is the one who uses dynamic footwork and yet when you consider the prototypic passive use of feet - the lazy mans step lunge (or any attack in prep for that matter) - it becomes clear that there is a balance/tension in who actually gains the advantage in any collapse of distance. Or put to oversimplify; forcing the collapse of distance does not equal controlling the collapse of distance.[/QUOTE]

True, forcing a collapse does not NECESSARILY equal controlling that collapse. Neither does allowing the opponent to force a collapse. Or tricking the opponent into forcing it, or whatever. I never said that lessons should all include the aggresive taking over of distance, just ways to control it. How this is done is one of the topics I hope to explore in this thread.

Now exercises like the distance parry game improve on this by giving both fencers a chance to 'win' but they are still based on premeditated offensive vs defensive roles.

As to how the distance play is used in lessons, well here is a real issue with group vs individual instruction. In an individual lesson distance play is built around seeing what is an attack action vs what is reconisance (noise). Clearly when working one on one it is easy to get correct responses so that actions out of distance are either ignored or given false responses. This is much harder in a group paired exercise - depending on the level of course.

I think if you are using distance cues properly in an individual lesson - actions are determined both by the distance, actual or anticipated, as well as by whether the coaches action is false, preparatory or an attack - then you should certainly be doing no harm (IMHO).

All good points, but not really related to what I was looking for here. It still sounds, to me at least, as though you are talking about distance manipulation while within fencing distance, whereas I was looking for distance manipulation (and other purposes of footwork) while out of distance, to both set up a good time to close, prevent the opponent from doing the same, and act on the good times that you do cause.

[jBirch]

I'm currently on a "Keep It Simple" kick...Q: Do you even need to teach breaking the distance?

Instead of trying to teach something as fickle as "feel" for distance explicitly, why not simply devolve it into it's component parts? Correct footwork + correct transitions + correct timing = keeping distance precisely?

First issue is to ensure that footwork is always done correctly and in balance. All the technical issues around simple footwork actions need to be tweaked.

Second issue is transitioning between footwork actions correctly and in balance. Again, tweak any of the transitional issues.

Third issue is in the perceive/react loop both around opportunities and threats. We train opportunity exploitation by showing ever more fleeting opportunity that the student is supposed to take advantage of by lunging to target. We train threat perception by making more realistic attacks and more realistic attempts to break the distance.

Here's a game you might want to try:

1) Only fencing footwork is allowed.
2) Both fencers hold onto a stick approx. 1m long (roughly lunge distance) with their fencing hand.
3) The game is to get the other person to lose their balance either by pushing or pulling on the stick.

Hope this helps.

James.

[AaronK]

I will only give a pramble that I am NOT speaking about all coaches when I am speaking in generalities. There may be exceptional coaches who do not follow the rule, and I believe that most coaches actually do care about doing their best for their students, to the best of their abilities.
RIT, I think you have noticed a critical point in fencing practice: There is a common way to practice/recieve information that does not resemble the skills performed in competition. I have been thinking about just the same problem (focusing on preparation, rather than the final action in lessons) since it was put into my head about eight years ago [not by a fencing coach, but by another sports coach who I worked with. His background was training elite athletes in Judo and he faced similar problems long before he questioned me about how fencers train]. IMO, the final moment of the action (the last tempo) is over-emphasized in coaching. There are important reasons to practice that last tempo- at all levels of a fencer's development. I feel that more lessons should resemble a bout, and more training should be put in context of what the opponent is actually doing [as Brad had mentioned about his lessons, and practice at Temple].
Why is it that coaches tell you to be in control of the timing, distance, speed, etc., of a bout and then in a lesson, they are in control of all these things? Keeping distance is not what happens in a fencing match. In Epee for example, there is a constant struggle for that middle-ground. Both epeeists are feeling each other out until they can find that moment to execute their action. If you measure the number of attempts made to secure that moment vs. the number of times someone makes an action to score (or defend). Measure the time they spend in lessons on hitting, vs. the amount of time in lessons they spend on working for the opportunity to hit- I think you will see a discrepancy. Also look at a saber bout- though they traverse the strip far more dynamically, they are not simply keeping distance either. If you watch carefully you can see both sabruers are changing thier footwork to adjust the distance or control the timing of the phrase. Again, watch the number of hits in a lesson, vs. the amount of time spent on setting up those hits. Students may be successful in spite of their training.
As I initially said, I can't speak for all coaches, nor do I know what happens at people's practices other than what I have seen. What I have seen, I think more student time should be spent developing problem solving skills and preparatory actions in lessons (preparatory actions as defined by Czajkowski both in his book, and in various articles such as: http://www.fencing.ca/coaching/fenci...s_cza_eng.pdf). Czajkowski doesn't explain any specific action, though you can figure them out on your own with a little crit. thinking.

[fencerontheline]

I'm not talking about the final few tempos of an action, here. I already know how to have a student lead off with a slow half advance and finish the action with the rest of an advance and lunge, change it into a check step backwards or just finish the advance and start over depending on what happens to the distance, or any other preparitory footwork exercise you would care to mention.

RIT,
Contributing to some drift...
I think one of the problems you're coming across is how you're teaching the finish of an action. If you teach the fencer to decide their action on the front leg, they aren't going to hit a super-large amount of attacks... Their arm should be operating independantly...

It's really tough to explain online, so hit me up in person, and I'll show you what I mean

[darius]

Aaron:

Why is it that coaches tell you to be in control of the timing, distance, speed, etc., of a bout and then in a lesson, they are in control of all these things?

jBirch:

Instead of trying to teach something as fickle as "feel" for distance explicitly, why not simply devolve it into it's component parts? Correct footwork + correct transitions + correct timing = keeping distance precisely?

I'm playing Devil's Advocate here; in most lessons, the action starts a tempo or two before the initial collapse of distance. What happens before that (unless it's cued from standing) is considered just "noise," which can be increased or decreased in volume depending on the student's level.

Let's just assume the student has the ability to do technically correct footwork. Creation of the appropriate distance happens artificially in lessons, by making the student start at the correct place. Isn't it easier to develop that "feel" for distance by doing lots of distance games, targeted bouting, and then real bouting? Multiple opponents have multiple distances after all, whereas a coach is limited by their own size / skills.

---

Can you make these "bout-like scenarios" more concrete, Aaron & Brad?

My thinking on this subject brought me along these lines, which is just setting up a real-bout scenario in lesson:

(Teaching focus: defense)

From footwork [led by student, or coach]
- C: Takes over attack w/ beat
  * S: Derobe beat, attack into preparation - HIT
  * S: Give up ground, making false counterattack
    - C: Finish attack
      * S: Parry-riposte - HIT
      * S: Get away, go - HIT
    - C: Attempt countertime beat vs counterattack
      * S: Derobe, attack into preparation with opposition - HIT
      * S: Parry-riposte - HIT
  * S: Counterattack w/ opposition - HIT
  * S: Counterattack w/ esquive - HIT
  * S: Counterattack w/ mask parry (new for 2005!) - COACH MISSES.  HIT.

(Teaching focus: pushing opponents to the back of the strip. Push + play defense.)

- S: Uses footwork to close distance slowly.  Occasional threats w/ blade.
  * C: Retreats
    - S: Follows.  Loop.
  * C: Parries, no riposte.
    - S: Retakes blade.  Loop.
  * C: Parries, ripose.
    - S: Counter-riposte - HIT
  * C: Attack-into-preparation.
    - S: Parry-riposte - HIT
    - S: Counterattack - HIT
  * C: Beat, long attack
    - S: False counterattack, parry-riposte - HIT.
    - S: Break distance.  Loop.

In these cases, the student is simply forced to create the footwork they need for the action they want. (Obviously, for an unskilled student, we can slow the action down and not give them a large tactical set.) If they're keeping the distance too close, they'll get hit. If it's too large or they're unbalanced, the coach can create a situation where the student is unsuccessful.

But even here especially in the first example, we're just working "from Footwork." Before the action happens there's nothing targeted unless we want to recreate a scenario; maybe starting at a certain zone on the strip.

Granted, RIT has what appears on the surface to be a harder task - in the convention weapons, it's easier to let the actions guide you to the right place.

darius

[AaronK]

For lack of having a video for you, I would consider this lesson "bout-like"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE2NMrqCGaI

I would argue that it does not demonstrate student-initiated actions well, as the coach is often in control of the cue. I would argue that watching this lesson you can still see that both the fencer and coach are highly skilled and work with each other often. A lesson like this would allow the student to develop the action with preparation to support it.

I would consider this lesson very UN-boutlike:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKL0r9cJmgw

Most lessons I have observed, look more like the latter. You can see in the background bouting-practice or warm-up. I am not stating that this kind of lesson doesn't have a purpose, but the coach in this lesson is pretty much an animated lunging-pad. Smirnov arguably didn't need to develop his preparatory skills at this point in his career. However, I would bet that if all of his lessons were like this, he developed them on his own against training partners rather than in the lesson.

[Allen Evans]

Every good coach comes to a place in their career (some early, some late) when they realize that there is more to this fencing business than just putting "the pointy end into the man". They begin to think about expanding their lessons from technical skills: the execution of the action in the final tempo that actually scores (or prevents) a hit, to the preparation that leads up to that action, and perhaps even the preparation before that.*

At very close distance, there is no need to prepare. In fact, it's dangerous. At close distance, if the student is not finishing an attack, they are getting hit in the preparation -- or parried and then hit. At close distance, technique is of primary importance.

As distance expands, the number of possible preparations expands with it. The new coach is faced with an overwhelming number of possible combinations of foot and hand tempos to teach when talking about long distances. This is probably one of the reasons why new coaches venture into this area with some trepidation**: where should this teaching start? Is one preparation better than another? What about combining foot and blade actions at a long tempo? Should preparations be adapted to the student skills or to the opponent's weakness? These are the kinds of questions that never get answered.

With the number of possible preparations expanding at big distances this almost certainly means that the student will be spending a lot of time working on a specific sequence of actions to the detriment of others, all of which might be equally likely.

Teaching technique always pulls at a coach. A coach works hard on teaching his/her student to prepare, prepare, prepare, but they still bicycle the lunge, or can't get their arm out at the right time on the fleche, and a technical failure ruins a good preparation. The coach throws up their hands and returns to club to work on close distance technical actions.

The answer for great coaches seems to be to teach "classes" of preparations that the student brings to the practice strip and gradually refines through practice and competition. The student finds some of these classes or types of preparations a good fit and continues to refine them, while the others disappear from the skill set and the coach ceases to teach them.

I see this approach of "classes" or types of preparations very often in saber, with it's large, very fluid distances. It seems to not exist at all in epee, with the exception of some of the work by Gary Copeland (which might explain some of his success, neh?). I'd love to see someone write a book about this.

Allen

___________________________________

*I often joke with another coach that the taking of the time in saber now starts so early that if a fencer fumbles with their keys in the parking lot of the venue, good referees can feel that hesitation and deny them the time for the rest of the day.

**Old coaches, not wanting to work this hard, avoid it completely.

[acaba]

The answer for great coaches seems to be to teach "classes" of preparations that the student brings to the practice strip and gradually refines through practice and competition. The student finds some of these classes or types of preparations a good fit and continues to refine them, while the others disappear from the skill set and the coach ceases to teach them.

Allen, can you explain what you mean by "classes" of preps? Is a class a particular combination of footwork/bladework? Can you give a couple of examples?

- Aaron

[jfarmer]

I'm playing Devil's Advocate here; in most lessons, the action starts a tempo or two before the initial collapse of distance. What happens before that (unless it's cued from standing) is considered just "noise," which can be increased or decreased in volume depending on the student's level.

I think that I would argue that an efficient and effective fencer would not be doing anything in preparation that would be considered as "noise."

True, we as coaches tend to spend most of our time, and center our lessons around, the last parts of the action leading to the hit (or it's defense). We do need to spend more time teaching the physical tools used to probe the opponent's reactions, and the deceptive tactics needed to control not just the distance, but as mentioned, the tempo. One could view the actions taken outside of "fencing distance" as being of equal importance, if not more important, than the actions within distance.

John Farmer
Coach, Oak Ridge Fencers Club

[darius]

I think that I would argue that an efficient and effective fencer would not be doing anything in preparation that would be considered as "noise."

I think you're quibbling with my word choice, but not what I'm saying.

To clarify: when I'm talking about "noise" in this context, I mean from the coach's perspective. Delivering false cues, the real cue from wrong distance, beats on the blade, etc.

Even as a fencer, adding "noise" is one of the more important things to do -- it disguises your intention. A fencer who wants to attack the foot in epee will probably spend some time setting up low-risk beats and wrist-picks, to make their opponent think about that target. That "noise" isn't a real action, per-say, but it does serve a purpose.

darius

[jfarmer]

I think you're quibbling with my word choice, but not what I'm saying.

To clarify: when I'm talking about "noise" in this context, I mean from the coach's perspective. Delivering false cues, the real cue from wrong distance, beats on the blade, etc.

Even as a fencer, adding "noise" is one of the more important things to do -- it disguises your intention. A fencer who wants to attack the foot in epee will probably spend some time setting up low-risk beats and wrist-picks, to make their opponent think about that target. That "noise" isn't a real action, per-say, but it does serve a purpose.

darius

Quite probably. I was formerly a communications & real-time software developer, hence "noise" usually means something bad, not desired, and usually not on purpose.

And to carry this back to the original question and also Allen's comment, I suspect that what we are looking for is some way to describe and then teach the skills, both physical and mental, to carry these types of activities out.

They usually get lumped under the topic of tactics and labeled as deceptions or first action feints. However, I think we are talking about actions before that. Actions that, if in a foil bout, be be characterized as occurring well out of distance. (Which does beg the question, are the same physical & mental skills used to deceive while within fencing distance?)

John Farmer
Coach, Oak Ridge Fencers Club

[jBirch]

Darius,

You said something that twigged with me:

A fencer who wants to attack the foot in epee will probably spend some time setting up low-risk beats and wrist-picks, to make their opponent think about that target. That "noise" isn't a real action, per-say, but it does serve a purpose.

This is speaking about "eyes closed" techniques: where the target is predetermined and we simply need to coax a better opportunity out of the opponent.

This is one type of preparation.

So too can we do preparations (mostly with distance) when we approach "eyes open" opportunities. This is what we often see in epee where we play very carefully on the edge of breaking distance, hoping to gain enough advantage that we can hit a couple of targets.

And we can do preparations (semi-committed) when we approach "partially eyes open" opportunities usually by making a weak attack and a strong follow-up, depending upon what the opponent does as our attack starts to arrive.

Does it make sense to talk about teaching preparations using that framework instead? To me it opens up discussions about distance preparations, blade preparations, tactical preparations and strategic preparations (where we see what an opponent is particularly weak against as a tournament progresses).

Just some thoughts.

James.

[RITFencing]

Ok, I got a lesson tonight from a very good epee coach. My first lesson from him; won't be the last.

Here's how he seemed to deal with it. Once I was good with an action, he and I would move back and forth at the edge of diastance, just playing with it, playing with the blades a bit as well. The actions themselves were set up so that his cue would collapse the distance a bit, and that my first action would collapse it a bit more, to the point where I was in range for second and/or third intentions to higher percentage targets like the chest and flank. He also gave the cues at very good times, generally when the distance between us was right for it, or something I had done with the blade seemed to warrant him making the cue. This was not something discussed, just what I seemed to get out of the lesson. There really was not much talking going on.

All in all, though, it seemed like an excellent approach. Having the cue be a realistic action and giving it when this playing with distance/bladework seems like a great way to teach a fencer to draw that cue and begin the collapse of distance. I was quite impressed.